this series of nothings
by brood saint
Summary: Drabbles set to episode 4x04. Sam and Dean's thoughts throughout.


A/N: Sort of set of scenes written to episode 4x04. I watched it, and wrote while I did. And this is what happened. :D I like it.

**i.**  
Cassiel says "stop it," and Dean immediately feels like he's in the second grade. Scolded by a teacher-angel-tax accountant-thing. The mind boggles at how life turned into this.

And then the holy trench coat of doom turns his face and meets Dean's eyes. He tilts his head and says quite softly, because warriors of god don't need to yell, "You need to stop it, Dean, or we will."

But Dean understands in between the lines. In between the lines is a lifetime of words, the years he's lost down the drain to what people _haven't_ said – and what Cassiel is really telling Dean is that, "You don't know your brother the way we do. You don't know your brother at all."

He doesn't want to admit it. Lose a sentence to the in-between and half-thoughts and you lose fifty years. Dean closes his eyes, and for the first time, he has to agree.

**ii**.  
The look on Dean's face when he walks in is all wrong. Tight-lipped, jaw clenched, and his eyes scream murder. For a brief second, Sam remembers the look on their dad's face when mom died – and his heart stops.

Sam doesn't know if this is a fight they can come back from. And if it is, he doesn't know if he wants to be there when they do.

**iii.**  
It's very true – Dean would kill Ruby if two factors weren't weighing in on his conscience: 1) the gasping, recently de-possessed man probably needs an adrenaline shot (or twelve), and 2) he'd much rather yell at Sam this moment than spend the next ten minutes slapping around a royal Demon bitch pain in his ass.

Not that it isn't appealing. It just isn't what he's going to do.

If Dean could count the number of times he has actually been oxblood angry with Sam, they wouldn't go past one hand. That time when they were kids and Sam ran away to the arcade after John forgot his birthday (again). When Sammy came home one night and said, "I'm going to college" and those were his famous last words for four years. Fight in the car and Sam disappeared off to prowl with some girl named Meg at a busstop, and Dean was left to wonder which would be better: shoot his pride in the foot and say he's sorry, or brood for a week and wait for Sammy to make the first call.

And now.

Now he is seeing red. Scarlet. There are so many different shades of "I'm about to kick your ass" that Dean isn't sure he think straight. He's too ready to break Sam's jaw. Yell for ten days. So he lets Ruby sidle off and remembers to take deep breaths, keep the gun in his pocket _in _his pocket. Shooting his brother wouldn't be a good solution. Remember to breathe.

Breathe.

But then he looks over at Sam's kicked puppy eyes, and how the first word out of his mouth is "Dean," (and would quickly be followed by I'm sorry if given the chance),

And suddenly, it's too late. He just doesn't want to hear it.

**iv**.  
If Sam had a nickel for every time it's been _this_ bad between them, he'd have three nickels. Four after last night. Twenty cents and it would get him nowhere, except in the realm of brotherly fighting it seems like a whole damn lot. Everything is tense and stretched tight. It isn't getting better; it's only getting worse.

Dean doesn't come home afterwards. Sam waits up for ten hours, falls asleep briefly on the couch – drool and all – then wakes up, goes over to the table, and reads for another four. Still alone.

Sam finally writes a post-it note to himself: _If Dean doesn't come back within the next two hours, then it's time to call Bobby. _It's the worst case scenario, and, for some reason, those always end with calling Bobby.

**v**.  
Dean drinks four beers, three shots, and smokes three camels. He doesn't like cigarettes, as a general rule, but desperate times call for desperate measures. He doesn't flirt, doesn't get laid, doesn't bother to get any new numbers from cute, horny waitresses. He just sits around in his car for a while, and stares at the road. Nothing changes, except somewhere along the third Sam Adams, he decides that he can't do this anymore. Something in him snaps. And then he turns the Impala on and speeds home.

Coincidentally, when he gets there, he _does_ almost break Sam's jaw. It's the little ironies in life, really.

**vi**.  
Sam stares in Dean's eyes after he's punched him (the second time) and he remembers John. John's anger, John's disgust. John's look of betrayal. Dean doesn't mean to be, but right now he's channeling their father so well that Sam if didn't know any better, he would say his brother's possessed. It's not a good sign. John had a helluva great left hook too.

He knows what Dean's thinking. He knows that Dean is thinking that he's losing Sam all over again. And part of it… part of it is true.

**vii**.  
The irony, really, the irony hits him.

There and then.

Dean has an angel sitting on his shoulder, pulling the strings, and Sam? Sam has a _Demon._

He can't believe it. If this is what it takes to believe in God, then Dean officially wants out.

**viii**.  
Sam's heart breaks when Dean tells him that he would hunt him. That's the line that they've crossed. Their history, broken in two: before tonight, and after. Nothing will be the same. Everything compartmentalized. For a minute, the world goes black, and when it is reborn, Sam feels wrong and dead and new.

Dean has a part of him that hates Sam.

Maybe this is how demons are really made: they are ruined by the people they love.

**ix**.  
There are tears in both of their eyes, and no one to come and wipe them. San and Dean both wish in the same second that their parents weren't dead, so they'd have someone to talk to. Someone to kiss their foreheads and whisper softly that _this too shall pass._

It won't. It's a lie, but they would give anything just for a lie.

**x**.  
When Dean sees the guy scarfing bloody meat, his only thoughts are: Huh. Weird. Gross.

And then—

I wonder what it tastes like.

**xi**.  
When it comes to hunters, Sam and Dean have a whole sleuth of surrogate fathers: Travis, Bobby, Pastor John, Jeoffrey Collins, Jamie Finnigan, Randall Dodges, Smithey…

The list goes on. A million smiling, gun-wielding men to replace the hole where their real dad should be.

**xii**.  
"Nothing more important than family."

Sam may have gone to some expensive school and majored in law, but Dean got his degree in sarcasm and irony, and he didn't have to pay 35,000 a year to get it.

**xiii**.  
The real reason Dean loves Travis (besides the dry wit, the occasional subtle jab at John that only bitter love can bring) is that he is a plethora of weird, awesome words.

Phantasmagoria. Scintillated. And now, long-pig. Someday, Dean's gonna ask Travis to write him a dictionary for Christmas. It would make his year.

**xiv**.  
Sam has been the outsider from day one. He is an outsider in the Hunter World and an outsider in the Real World. He can only half-fit in to either, and he knows that that can ever be enough. Hunters think of him as soft and normal people think he's weird. A big, crazy wimp. Split personality.

It's not enough to be one way or another. Sam is willing to fight, but he wants to fight for something _meaningful_. He wants to do what is right. Hunters like to shoot guns, drink beer, kiss women. They do what's right because it's fun, and because it allows them to kill the most monsters. They're the kids that fantasized about whacking the boogeyman, not the ones that hid beneath their covers.

Sam did a little of both. He knows fear and he knows anger. He knows what it's like to be on both sides, and Dean doesn't. Travis doesn't. Other hunters just don't have a clue. It's times like these that Sam wishes he got a little more of John in him, and a little less of Mary.

**xv**.  
Dean stares Sam down and suddenly the walls of the Impala are closing in. He's claustrophobic, suffocating, and he needs to Get Out.

Something in Dean snapped that night they fought, but something in Sam snapped the moment Dean looked at him just like the way everyone else did—not a little brother, not family—but a freak.

In that moment, he stopped being Sammy to Dean, and became Something Else. And that Something Else tore Sam apart.

**xvi**.

Even though they're still angry at each other, and there's a wall between them that puts China to shame – Dean really has to hand it to Sam – the boy has got a _gift. _Namely in the form of puppy brown eyes and the face of an angel (not the real kind though, since real angels apparently look like actuaries).

Sam can sweet-talk his way into any stranger's heart. Dean really wishes he knew how he does it. Really.

**xvii**.  
When they walk up to the Montgomerys, Sam has this nagging feeling that something has gone wrong. It happens sometimes – not a premonition, not all the psychic crap – just a gut feeling. The kind you get when you walk into your own death trap. Except, then they open the door, and realize they've walked into Travis'.

It's fucked up, the way this happens. The way good people get ripped apart due to some tragic inconsistency in the natural world. Ghosts? Demons? Shapeshifters? If there was a God… Sam shuts his eyes and looks away from seems to be all that's left of Trav. There isn't a God. If there was, He might've taken a little more care with His greatest creation.

**xviii**.  
Sam holding the blowtorch is Sam telling John that he's about to die. That this is the end. You had a life, you had a _choice_, and you made the wrong one. You became the monster.

Dean watches John go up in flames, burn to sweet nothings on the carpet, and he feels sick and terrified and at peace.

Because Sam isn't like Travis, Sam is just Sammy. And in the end, he made the right choice. He never became the monster.


End file.
